A narrow-mouth (narrow-neck) container that is widely used as a beverage container (e.g., polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottle), and a wide-mouth (wide-neck) container in which the ratio of the outer diameter (e.g., 43 mm or more) of the neck to the outer diameter of the body is large, are known as containers made of a synthetic resin. The wide-mouth container is widely used as a solid (e.g., jam) container in addition to a liquid container since it is easy to remove the contents from the wide-mouth container. The narrow-mouth container and the wide-mouth container are produced by blow-molding a narrow-mouth preform or a wide-mouth preform that is designed to produce the desired (final) shape.
Such a preform is consecutively supplied to a blow molding device, a neck crystallization device, or the like along a tilted guideway (chute) by utilizing the weight of the preform. The narrow-mouth preform having a long body is supplied through the chute in an upright state in which the open end face faces upward, and rotationally transferred to a blow molding device using a star wheel (see JP-T-2011-528629 and JP-A-2012-229114). The wide-mouth preform having a short body is supplied through the chute in an inverted state in which the open end face faces downward, and rotationally transferred to a blow molding device or a neck crystallization device using a star wheel (see WO2003-008176, WO2012-029528 and WO2012-046620).